Photo and caption from the
I-R-A-Q ( I Remember Another Quagmire ) portfolio of
Mike Hastie, US Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71. (Contact
at: (hastiemike@earthlink.net)
for more of his outstanding work. T)

“We Were
Misused And Misled”

Iraq Vet
Says Bring The Troops Home Now

APRIL 21, 2005 By Jeff Eason,
Mountain News (North Carolina)

With increasing media
attention on issues of the day such as Social Security, the
installation of the new Pope at the Vatican, and the Michael
Jackson trial, you could understand why some people might be
under the impression that the War in Iraq is a done deal.

When you talk to Navy Corpsman
2nd Class Charlie Anderson, however, you begin to realize
that there are many unresolved issues regarding our
country’s conflict in Iraq.

“There are 50 to 60 attacks on
U.S. personnel every day in Iraq,” said Anderson Tuesday in
a phone interview. “Make no mistake about it, we’re still
in Iraq.”

Anderson recently got out of
the Navy after a stint in Iraq and has made increasing the
public’s awareness about the war and about veterans’ issues
his top priorities.

Corpsman Anderson, currently
working as the Southern Regional Coordinator for the
organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, will speak on
Saturday, April 23 at 7 p.m. in the Roan Mountain Room at
ASU’s Plemmons Student Union and on Sunday, April 24, he
will lead a discussion group at the High Country United
Church of Christ on State Farm Road in Boone. Also on Sunday
he will speak at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Council
Street in Boone at 2:30 p.m.

Anderson was first deployed to
Iraq during the initial invasion on February 1, 2003 and
worked as a medic with a tank division in country until May
28, 2003. The tank division stayed on the move around Basra
and Baghdad until it was moved out of country into Kuwait.

“Tank divisions are a big
target,” said Anderson. “So we tend to keep moving.”

After
become a leader in Iraq Veterans Against the War,
(www.ivaw.net)
Anderson decided the best way to utilize his
experiences was to tell the public about ways in which he
feels that veterans and active military personnel are being
treated unfairly by the policies of the Bush Administration.

“There was a lot of
misunderstanding among military personnel and the public
about why we went to war in the first place,” said Anderson.

“I’m trying
to raise the collective consciousness of the people who were
lied to. Most of the people in the
military went in wanting to help other people. Some went in
for job opportunities, some went in to better themselves as
people, and some went in to get money to go to school.

“We were
misused and misled. At first we were told
that it was about weapons of mass destruction. They were
not there and our leaders knew that before the invasion. We
were told that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11 when
there was no such link. And we were told that Saddam
Hussein was a threat when he was no threat whatsoever.

“We keep
losing good people over there and it’s wrong.”

Anderson also wants people to
know that the government is reneging on promises made to
military personnel regarding education and health benefits
for veterans.

“Veterans benefits are a
completely under-funded aspect of the war,” said Anderson.

“There are
a lot of vets coming home that are going to need those
benefits and they just aren’t going to be there. That was
supposed to be the deal with an all-volunteer military. We
have contracts that we signed in good faith and now they are
not being honored. I’m speaking to people to tell them that
if we send people to war, we need to be willing to honor
those contracts and do the right thing when they get home.”

As a medic,
Anderson saw his share of wounded men and women and he feels
that one of the bigger problems related to the War in Iraq
is the number of disabled Americans that will have to be
rehabilitated stateside.

“A lot has been made of the
fact that this war has resulted in a lower number of people
killed (1,559 American deaths as of Wednesday, April 19) in
this conflict compared to, say, the Vietnam War,” said
Anderson. “A lot of that is due to modern medicine and
advances in in-the-field care. A lot of people who would
have been dead in Vietnam or in other wars have been kept
alive. They’re coming back to communities that are simply
not prepared to receive them. They are becoming misfits in
their own communities, without the help or training that
they will need to become useful members of society for the
rest of their lives. That issue is like the elephant in the
room that no one is willing to talk about.”

Anderson stated that he plans
to use this weekend’s speaking opportunities as a chance to
tell people about what it was like in Iraq and to remind
them that there is still a war taking place.

“When I returned home to
Virginia Beach, I felt a very hollow sense of support from a
lot of people in my community,” said Anderson. “When I went
to church that first Sunday, a lot of people pointed to the
yellow stickers on their cars that said ‘Support Our
Troops.’ But those same people did very little to help my
family or send letters to the troops in Iraq. It takes
about 30 seconds to buy a sticker at Wal-Mart and put it on
your car. But what does it really mean?”

“I’m going to continue to go
around and speak on these issues as long as we have problems
to solve,” said Anderson.

“I want our
troops to come home now and I want our veterans to have the
benefits to which they are entitled.”

NEED SOME
TRUTH? CHECK OUT THE NEW TRAVELING SOLDIER

Telling
the truth - about the occupation or the criminals
running the government in Washington - is the first
reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more
than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance
- whether it's in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or
inside the armed forces. Our goal is for Traveling
Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class
people inside the armed services together. We want this
newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize
resistance within the armed forces. If you like what
you've read, we hope that you'll join with us in
building a network of active duty organizers.
http://www.traveling-soldier.org/And join
with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and
bring our troops home now! (www.ivaw.net)

IRAQ WAR
REPORTS

Tal Afar
IED Kills One U.S. Soldier, Another Wounded

22 April 2005 Aljazeera.Net:
One US soldier
was killed and another wounded when a bomb exploded near
their patrol vehicle in northern Iraq, the US military said
in a statement.

The attack took
place early on Friday north of Tal Afar, about 80km west of
Mosul, at about 2.30am local time, the statement said.

Lowville
Marine Killed

April 22, 2005 Associated
Press

LOWVILLE,
N.Y. The Defense Department reported that a 21-year-old
Marine from northern New York has died from combat injuries
in Iraq.

Corporal
Kelly M. Cannan, of Lowville, and another Marine were killed
Wednesday by a homemade bomb while they were conducting
combat operations in Ar Ramadi.

WWNY-TV reports that Cannan
was a 2001 graduate of Lowville Academy, and flags yesterday
were lowered to half-staff in the Lewis County village.

Military officials told the
family he was fatally injured while riding in a Humvee in
the Al Anbar province and the bomb exploded nearby.

Marine Dead
In “Non-Hostile” Incident

April 22, 2005 Associated
Press

FALLUJAH, Iraq — A Marine was
killed in a non-hostile incident in Iraq, the U.S. military
said Friday.

The Marine,
assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division,
2nd Marine Expeditionary Force was killed on Thursday at
Camp Delta, near Karmah, west of Baghdad,
the military said in a statement.

Flagstaff
Marine Is Killed

Apr. 22, 2005 David J.
Cieslak, The Arizona Republic

A
22-year-old Marine from Flagstaff was killed Wednesday while
serving in Iraq, marking the second death of a soldier from
the northern Arizona city during the war.

Lance Cpl. Marty G. Mortenson
died when an improvised explosive device detonated during a
combat operation in Ramadi, the U.S. Department of Defense
said in a statement Thursday night.

Mortenson
is the 48th soldier from Arizona to die in Iraq. It brings
the number of Arizonans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to
51.

His death comes less than a
week after two soldiers with Arizona ties were killed when
their units were attacked in Iraq.

3rd Armored
Cavalry's CSM Wounded

4/22/2005 The Associated
Press, FORT CARSON, Colo.

An Alabama soldier who is the
highest ranking enlisted man of the 3rd Armored Cavalry
Regiment was wounded in an attack in Iraq that claimed the
life of one of his soldiers.

Command
Sgt. Maj. John Caldwell was hurt when his vehicle was
attacked by small arms fire and a homemade bomb, the post
newspaper, the Mountaineer, reported Friday.

Caldwell, 43, of Elba, Ala.,
has served 25 years in the Army. He was flown first to
Landstuhl Regional Army Medical Center in Germany and then
Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington.

The
inability of the US army to secure the seven-mile road
between Baghdad and the airport, also the site of the
main US military base, has become a symbol of the
failure of the US in Iraq.

Heavily
armoured US patrols, prone to open fire unpredictably, are
regarded as being as dangerous as the insurgents.

TROOP NEWS

Wounded
Still Forced To Beg For Charity;

Assholes In
Washington Won’t Come Up With Clothes, Shaving Gear

Today,
the Wounded Warriors provide a care package for
seriously wounded soldiers when they reach stateside
treatment centers. The items include a change of
clothes, a shaving kit and a CDplayer.

April 22, 2005 By Roger W.
Hoskins, The Modesto Bee.

Sgt. Joshua Olson came to
Modesto and Escalon on Thursday to show the flag … and his
limp.

Olson lost his right leg Oct.
27, 2003, during what he called a routine patrol in northern
Iraq.

"We got in this firefight and
there was an explosion." Olson said he took the brunt of the
blast in the upper thigh. His femoral artery was severed.

"I should have bled out in
five minutes," he said. "I was awake for about an hour until
they got me to Mosul and they put me in this induced coma."

He received "a complete oil
change," 37 units of blood between the time he was wounded
and when he reached the American base in Landstuhl, Germany,
a stop he doesn't remember.

Olson said
he woke up eight days after he was hurt and he could see his
father, mother and girlfriend. "I thought, 'How did you get
to Iraq?'"

The reality
was Olson was in Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Washington, D.C., and he had lost his right leg up to the
hip.

Soon, some comrades came to
his aid, messengers from Wounded Warriors. Their objective
was to help other grievously wounded service personnel with
rehabilitation and transition to a new and different life.

Today, the
Wounded Warriors provide a care package for seriously
wounded soldiers when they reach stateside treatment
centers. The items
include a change of clothes, a shaving kit and a CD player.

[The only
possible reason to be collecting money to do this is because
the corporate scum who planned this war and run the
government still don’t give a fuck about the wounded, and
won’t come up with the money for such pathetically basic
items as clothes and a shaving kit. $80 billion more for
the war and the wounded can beg for handouts. There is no
enemy in Iraq: the enemy is running the government in
Washington DC, using the troops as so much disposable meat
to further their Imperial dreams and fill their own pockets
with millions and billions. Payback is overdue.]

Young
Marine Wounded

April 22, 2005 (AP)

A 21-year-old Marine Corporal
from Yonkers is recuperating in a Maryland naval hospital
after being wounded while on duty in Iraq.

Marine
Corporal Ed Ryan was shot twice in the head.

The bullets
were removed in a hospital in Germany and Ryan was flown
this week to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda,
Maryland, where he is listed in critical but stable
condition.

Ryan's uncle, also named Ed
Ryan, who owns the Palmer Dairy deli in Yonkers, says this
was Ryan's second tour of duty in Iraq.

"NO MORE
WAR!”

Remembrance
& Resistance:

Humboldt
State Univ. Teach-In, Apr. 27-30

From: Brian Willson

Date: 22 Apr 2005 13:23:03
-0700

On 30th anniversary of the end of the U.S. War against Viet
Nam, Cambodia, and Laos, and 35th anniversary of the Kent
State shootings ------

From
Wednesday, April 27-Sat., Apr. 30, students and academic
departments at Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA, in
conjunction with Humboldt Bay Veterans For Peace will be
sponsoring "NO MORE WAR! Remembrance & Resistance," a series
of workshops and presentations for students and community
members alike.

Preserving
historic memory is critical if we are to possess vital
frames of reference for critiquing contemporary policies
that continue to repeat sickening patterns.

Guest
presenters for the 4 days includes:

Camilo Mejia, first Iraq War
II vet to publicly refuse a second deployment to Iraq for
which he served nearly a year in prison;

Tim Goodrich, co-founder of
Iraq Veterans Against the War;

Charlie Liteky, Congr. Medal
of Honor recipient from Viet Nam, who later renounced his
Medal in protest of Reagan's terrorist policies in Central
America, and who served as an eyewitness to the US invasion
of Iraq in 2003

Mike Hastie, a Viet Nam combat
medic who travels with his photo essay, "Lying Is the Most
Powerful Weapon In War"

Jack Ryan, ex-FBI
counterterrorism agent who was fired after 22 years for
refusing to investigate nonviolent activists as "domestic
terrorist suspects," two of whom were Liteky and Brian
Willson

Joe Lewis and Jim Russell, two
of the nine surviving woundees of the May 4, 1970 Kent State
massacre

Do you
have a friend or relative in the service? Forward this
E-MAIL along, or send us the address if you wish and
we’ll send it regularly.
Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is
extra important for your service friend, too often cut
off from access to encouraging news of growing
resistance to the war, at home and inside the armed
services.
Send requests to address up top.

Army Pukes
Out Propaganda Movie For Rolling Coffins:

“Behind
Closed Doors, Soldiers And Commanders Raised Serious Issues”

April 22, 2005 By Robert
Burns, Associated Press

Citing videotaped testimonials
from soldiers in Iraq, the Army on Thursday returned fire in
a battle with critics of its Stryker troop-carrying vehicle,
which some say inadequately protects soldiers.

The Army gave news
organizations a digital videotape that it said was produced
by soldiers of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, from
Fort Lewis, Wash., which spent a year in Iraq and was the
first unit to deploy the Stryker in combat.

Eric
Miller, who has led the Project on Government Oversight’s
scrutiny of the Stryker, said in an interview Thursday that
he considers the Army’s vigorous public defense of the
Stryker suspicious. He thinks it might indicate the Army
feels vulnerable on this issue.

Danielle Brian, the executive
director of Miller’s organization, called the videotape
“propagandistic.”

“This video
includes ‘so-called’ testimonials which cannot be taken
seriously,” Brian said. “Behind closed doors, soldiers and
commanders raised serious issues about the performance of
the Stryker. The only question left is whether these issues
have been adequately addressed. Rather than spending funds
on promotional videos, the Army should be fixing these
problems.”

The Army
think tank report, written in December and based on
interviews with soldiers and commanders, found a number of
problems with the Stryker. Among them:

• The
weapon system does not shoot accurately when the Stryker
is moving.

•
Computer systems for communications, intelligence and
other systems have malfunctioned in the desert heat
because of air conditioning problems.

[Since
whoever is responsible for this silly bullshit loves the
Stryker so much, let whoever leave immediately for Iraq, and
spend the next six months inside one lurching into canals,
off cliffs, and facing RPGs with inadequate defenses. And,
yes, let whoever also have the honor of checking the fucking
tires nine times a day, out in the open, visible to any and
all resistance warriors in the neighborhood.]

Only A
Month Ago:

Silly
General Boasted Iraq
Insurgency on Decline

[Thanks to
PB who sent this in. He writes: MYERS IS DELUSIONAL DUE TO
LACK OF OXYGEN CAUSED BY HIS HEAD BEING UP HIS OWN ASS FOR
2-3 YEARS]

Mar 17, 2005 By ROBERT BURNS,
AP Military Writer

AMMAN, Jordan - The military's top general
gave his most optimistic public assessment on Thursday of
progress in Iraq, saying the insurgency shows signs of
slipping as the U.S.-led international effort
gains momentum in building Iraqi police and military forces.

"I think
we're getting some momentum built up against the
insurgency," he told reporters at his
hotel in the Jordanian capital at the conclusion of a
weeklong trip that also took him to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Afghanistan.

I made a
tribute page for David. I am sending the link to it. If
anyone would like to check it out and post a message to him.
You can post anytime you like and he gets to check it. It
helps to boost morale. If you know anyone else that would
like to post on it as well the more the merrier.

An Army
captain stood by as drill sergeants abused trainees at Fort
Knox, including knocking one to the floor and punching
another in the chest, soldiers testified Wednesday.

Capt. William Fulton, a
company commander who is facing charges including
dereliction of duty stemming from the accusations, was
required to stop the abuse, according to military law. But
he did nothing to help the soldiers, Capt. Joseph Krill, who
is prosecuting the case, said at a hearing to review
evidence.

Soldiers testified that verbal
and physical abuse by drill sergeants began during the
trainees’ first hours at Fort Knox.

Army Spc. Andrew Soper said
Fulton just watched as a drill sergeant knocked him down at
the top of a stairway, then picked him up by the neck and
tossed him through a doorway. Pvt. Xavier DeHoyos
testified Fulton punched him in the chest.

“He just
watched for a minute before going into the other room,” Pvt.
Jason Steenberger testified of one incident of alleged
abuse. “I looked the captain in the face.”

Five
soldiers testified at a pre-trial hearing.

Capt.
William Fulton, a company commander, faces charges of
dereliction of duty, cruelty and mistreatment and false
swearing.

Life On Another Planet:

Mouth &
Butt Sex Will Still Be Crime In Military:

(Ass-Kissing At Pentagon Not Prohibited)

Washington Times, April 22,
2005, Pg. 6

The Pentagon is asking
Congress to change the military's anti-sodomy law so it can
be enforced under a "good order and discipline" standard,
although the armed services would continue their ban on open
homosexuals in the ranks.

The
Pentagon will continue to consider sodomy a crime and will
prosecute cases when the conduct is done during adultery,
homosexual acts or other instances considered detrimental to
good order and discipline.

Military
Families Poland;

A Village
Mourns

I
wanted to interview his parents in order to find out
what they think about the war and the heavy price they
paid as a family for Poland's role in 'Operation Iraqi
Freedom'.

From: Ewa Jasiewicz

To: GI Special

Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005
8:25 AM

Subject: Military Families
Poland

I’m in Poland till the 14th.

Anyway, I just wanted to let
you know that last week, myself and my friend Ania travelled
all the way deep into the depths of South-East Poland to a
small village (Pop. 600) near the Ukrainian Border.

There lives
the family of Darek, a Polish Soldier killed in Iraq along
with two others in an attack on their vehicle last
September. Darek was only 24-years-old. An officer, he was
decorated posthumously with the Polish version of the St
Georges Cross for bravery.

I wanted to
interview his parents in order to find out what they think
about the war and the heavy price they paid as a family for
Poland's role in 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'.

Myself and Ania hitched a lift
with an old couple who turned out to be the neighbours of
the family. They were reticent to speak of the incident,
visibly clamming up and stiffening in the seats of their
rickety fruit and vegetable ferrying van when I mentioned
Darek's name.

'I don’t think his mother will
speak to you' told me the straight-taking woman, 'she's
still too distraught. Journalists came and went but, they
wont talk to anyone, they cant talk about it, its too fresh,
its too raw'.

The admitted that no one
really knew precisely what happened but the official version
was a 'terrorist attack' but this did not appear to be
totally accepted. The suspicion of power and government is
entrenched in polish culture after decades of occupation,
authoritarian rule, martial law and ongoing state and media
manipulation. I did find out that Darek had a twin brother
though. And that Darek loved the army, loved it.

Darek's mother was getting
something out of her car when we approached their large and
elegant home. Darek's twin brother was in the garden fixing
up some summer furniture.

When I explained who I was and
that I wanted to talk, Darek's mother turned away and back
again with tears in her eyes. 'I’m sorry, I cant talk about
it, its too painful'.

I realise, and I respect that
decision I told her, and I told her Id been in Iraq and lost
someone close, obviously, not like a mother losing her son,
but..

She turned back and said, 'I
tried, we told him not to, but'. She stopped, distraught.
'Its just every time someone comes to talk about it, it
brings it all back, all of it. Darek loved the army, he
did. We just cant talk now, not yet'.

When I
asked whether she was forbidden from speaking to journalists
by the Polish ministry of defence, she stressed no no not at
all. But people had told us, a number of different people,
that they felt such a notice had been issued to all the
families of the war dead. According to friends here active
in the anti war movement, so far no journalist in Poland has
succeeded in interviewing any families who've lost loved
ones in Iraq.

We left and stopped at a small
corner store/shady bar not 2 minutes away from Darek's
house. I asked the shop keeper what she thought about
Darek's death, the price, Polish troops going in to Iraq,
was it worth his life?

'We're all devastated by his
death,' she said, 'the whole village, the whole village. If
you want to know what people think, go, go and ask.'

I explained
that the occupation hadn’t brought many social or economic
benefits to ordinary Iraqi people who were still living in
poverty.

She
replied, 'What about here? I don’t even know why we went in
there when we have people here living on the social minimum,
people hungry, why are we out there trying to improve the
lives of other people when we aren’t even doing it here?
People need benefits and aid right here'.

The conversation came to a
halt when Darek's twin brother came in. Me and Ania
stiffened, we both wanted to say something but were caught
in the throat by some sort of shame, a need not to intrude
any more, to scratch at the still open wound. He was buying
candles for Darek's grave.

We left. The shopkeeper told
us to get hitching for a lift as soon as possible because
Darek's family would be going to the graveyard and would be
driving by and maybe we could get a lift with them....

They didn’t pass us on the
road, the beautiful brown earth fields and forest flanked
road, but another car did, 2 passengers and a driver, going
our way. Getting in, sparking up a conversation, and
getting to the point of what the hell we were doing in the
village, we mentioned Darek's name and the car hushed cold
and people looked pained.

The driver
was from the village. He said, 'People were silent about it
all at first, supporting Darek being there but when he died,
well, then peoples' real feelings came out'. He didn’t
really elaborate. We didn’t push it.

I cant
forget the silence and the pain that came in to people when
Darek was mentioned, everywhere, it was like a secret you
were blurting out every time you mentioned it.

I don’t know if the Polish MOD
is censoring people or whether its self-censorship, I think
its the latter, because Darek, as they said, loved the army
and was decorated after his death. Maybe people speaking
out about his death would feel like a betrayal of the army
or his memory as a soldier as someone who was proud of being
a soldier.

People are
also afraid of the government in many ways, remembering the
days when police would shoot at demonstrators and Russian
tanks ruled the streets. It was 20 years ago but the legacy
continues.

I’m still planning to try and
speak to at least one Polish military family while I’m here.

I told that shop keeper in The
village about you Rose and your campaign, what you’re doing.

I hope she tells Darek's
mother but I don’t think she's ready to speak out.

I think
that whole village feels cheated and angry with the polish
govt but that rage and betrayal isn’t going to translate
into activism, not yet. But it might do elsewhere.

Opinion
polls state 80% of the Polish population is opposed to
Poland's ongoing presence in Iraq.

IRAQ
RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

“Saddam
Hussein Was An Oppressive Ruler. But A More Oppressive
Power Bigger Than Saddam Hussein Has Come...”

On
windswept Lake TharThar, the rebel leader, a onetime day
labourer, is content to carry on his fight.

“Saddam
Hussein was an oppressive ruler. He was unjust to us and
to Iraq. But a more oppressive power bigger than Saddam
Hussein has come... We are against oppression and
against what is being done by the occupiers.”

22 April 2005 (AFP)

LAKE THARTHAR - The rebel
leader kneels against a barren white wall, his face shrouded
in a red and white Keffiyeh as he grips a rusty Kalashnikov
and considers his options.

He runs a five-man cell living
a threadbare existence in a shack with plastic canvas walls
on the dirt banks of Lake TharThar, which Iraqi commandos
and US Apache helicopters assaulted one month ago.

Long after Iraqi forces said
they had burnt to the ground terror camps on the lake, the
cell leader, a survivor of that battle, continues to operate
on TharThar, which has been described as a gateway between
the insurgent haven of Anbar province and Salahaddin to the
north.

Reporters chanced on him when
they met insurgents who were patrolling the lakeside after
the March assault. The rebels challenged Iraqi government
claims that more than 80 of their fighters had been killed.

Between attacks, the five-man
cell takes out their rusty red metal boat, cast fishing nets
and fry their catch on a hot plate.

The rebel leader, who declines
to be named, and his men sleep on thin mattresses and pour
steaming cups of tea in their shack, littered with vegetable
tins.

They pride themselves on their
spartan existence

When talking about car
bombings and beheadings they feel have tarnished the
insurgency’s name: “There
are some groups who are doing some killing, robberies and
other acts that does not please God and his messenger. This
is aimed at distorting resistance in the eyes of the Iraqi
people,” the leader says

“We are following the Muslim
Scholars Association.... If the Muslim Scholars Association
orders us to stop fighting then we would consider it. But
if we see that their demand do not go in harmony with the
book of God and the teaching of his prophet then we will
keep fighting them,” the rebel leader says.

On
windswept Lake TharThar, the rebel leader, a onetime day
labourer, is content to carry on his fight.

“Saddam
Hussein was an oppressive ruler. He was unjust to us and
to Iraq. But a more oppressive power bigger than Saddam
Hussein has come... We are against oppression and
against what is being done by the occupiers.”

Collaborator Prison Boss Killed In Mosul

April 22
(KUNA)

Guerrillas
shot dead on Friday a manager of a government prison in the
northern city of Mosul, witnesses said.

They said Khaled Abdullah, the
man in charge of the prison, located in a suburban region of
the city, was shot dead by guerrillas in two speeding cars.
The man died on the spot and the attackers fled safely.

Resistance
Hits Domestic Iraq Oil Pipeline

April 22, 2005 Pak Tribune

Insurgents
have attacked an oil pipeline that feeds a power station in
the northern Iraqi town of Baiji, a police official said on
Friday.

The pipeline, which runs from
the oil centre of Kirkuk to Baiji, home to Iraq's biggest
oil refinery, does not pump oil for exports but it is a key domestic line.

Iraq is
expecting to resume oil exports through its northern export
line to Turkey this week. [Yeah, right. Only been
announced about 4,928 times since the invasion. And every
time it’s announced, the pipeline is blown again.]

An Iraqi
interpreter working in the green zone, a protected area
which is home to parliament, the government and the US
embassy, was captured Thursday by armed men who grabbed him
in a taxi, an interior ministry official
said.

A Turkish truck driver was
reportedly killed near Baghdad yesterday when a roadside
bomb exploded.

Aljazeera
reported seven Iraqi police officers were injured, including
a brigadier, in a roadside bomb attack in the centre of
Basra.

The blast destroyed the
vehicle in which they were travelling.

A car
bombing on Wednesday at a Baghdad police checkpoint killed
two Interior Ministry workers and a police officer, the US
military said. An officer and two civilians were wounded.

Outspoken, direct-action, grass-roots support for such a
withdrawal is unambiguously advancing the cause of Iraqi
self-determination while also adhering to the demands of
those troops who have returned from Iraq opposed to the
war.

"Before we
prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct their
secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle, we should
shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. and
its allied governments to withdraw from Iraq." -Arundhati
Roy

Unconditionally - that's the way I support the Iraqi
Resistance these days. While I do not offer political
support to all groups involved in the anti-imperial struggle
in Iraq, I work to support its collective purpose: forcing
the troops out now. Forcing, because the United States
won't leave any other way.

On a good
day, the US corporate media would have its audience believe
that a kinder, gentler imperialism is the only way forward
for Iraq. This is, of course, not the case. Nor does it
seem plausible, after two long years of occupation, that any
kind of imperialism will be tolerated by the Iraqi people.

I
believe there is only one effective, though seemingly
unspeakable, way to resolve the Iraq quagmire: immediate,
unconditional withdrawal of US-led coalition forces.

Outspoken, direct-action, grass-roots support for such a
withdrawal is unambiguously advancing the cause of Iraqi
self-determination while also adhering to the demands of
those troops who have returned from Iraq opposed to the
war.

While the
ostensible savagery of targeting of civilians does help the
US government label the freedom fighters of the present as
terrorists, the simultaneous media censorship omnipresent
throughout the war in Iraq blinds us to the equally if not
more savage violence perpetrated by our state against the
Iraqi civilians.

In Fallujah, for instance,
where reporters were prohibited for several months beginning
in November 2004, 65 percent of buildings were leveled to
the ground and anywhere between 600 to 3,000 civilians were
murdered, mostly by carpet-bombing, the increasingly favored
technique employed in Iraq as manpower begins to dwindle.
All of these conditions must be recognized when we consider
our relation to the Iraqi resistance.

If we
support the Iraqis right to self-determination, it must be
because we identify a common, equal humanity between us;
because we recognize that US occupation of Iraqi land and
the US-sanctioned torture, rape, murder, and theft are
unjust.

That, in
addition to the plight of our soldiers, which many of them
argue is worsening every day, is why we must demand troops
out now. For
no other reason. Accordingly, since the Iraqi resistance
is the force working to regain Iraqi sovereignty, we support
them-unconditionally.

We must
bring American troops home simply because it is not their
place to stop the insurgents.

Granted, even the most
inspiring national liberation movements had their crimes and
their tragedies. Many liberation struggles, fought under
the watchful eyes of the Cold War superpowers, even failed,
in the end, to achieve their objectives (Mozambique,
Zimbabwe, Algeria, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, the list
goes on).

Yet,
suffice it to say here that the limits or failures of a
movement do not nullify its purpose, although they may
hamper it. Past failures cannot justify the abandonment of
our commitment to the right of people everywhere to
self-determination.

They are
easy traps to fall into-romanticizing past struggles or
indicting 'insurgents' for use of terroristic tactics.
Yet, concerning the flat and stigmatized notion of
'terrorism,' 20th century history, in concert with brave
soldiers such as Carmello Mejia, and the invaluable
independent (unembedded) media shows us that our understanding of the
word 'terrorism' is necessarily compromised when our
government is occupying the land of the so-called
terrorists.

Conversely,
regarding the romanticization of the resistance we have a
model in Louisa May Alcott's writing through Jo in Little
Women: "it is not because women are good that they should
vote. It's because it is fair and just."

Historical hindsight would
have us see a certain truth, a certain continued struggle,
in the efforts and desires of people in Iraq-without needing
to judge or purify them.

What do you think?
Comments from service men and women, and veterans, are
especially welcome. Send to
contact@militaryproject.org. Name, I.D., withheld on
request. Replies confidential.

Iraq’s
Sunni Majority

April 21, 2005 Muwaffaq Rifai,
Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)

Although
there are no reliable statistics, Iraq has a clear Sunni
majority if Arabs and Kurds are combined.

Not that
such a fact makes any difference to those forces bent on
partitioning Iraq. They have categorised the Kurds as a
separate national identity so that they can speak of an Arab
Sunni minority dominating a Shia majority.

Mystery still surrounds the
claim by President Jalal al-Talabani that the bodies of 50
Shia hostages, from Madain, south of Baghdad, had been found
in the Tigris river.

Dr Falah
al-Permani of the Swera health department said 50 bodies had
been found in the river over three weeks. But Mr Talabani
said there had been a massacre of Shia hostages in the past
few days.

Medical
sources in the town of al-Madain have cast doubts that 60
bloated bodies recovered from a river in Iraq are those of
civilians thought to have been taken hostage there last
week.

Senior
police officials at the regional headquarters for the area
gave a detailed breakdown of when the bodies had been found.

They
said they had started to appear in the al-Suwayra
stretch of the Tigris nearly two months earlier, on 27
February. On the first three days, 27 bodies were
retrieved, while
during and after the supposed hostage crisis only six
corpses were pulled from the river.

Earlier, President Jalal
Talabani said the discovery proved that armed Sunni fighters
had seized up to 100 Shia last week in the town of
al-Madain, 20km southeast of Baghdad.

But local officials said the
bodies have been floating
to the surface for weeks, and there is no way of telling
where they came from.

Iraq was last week rocked by
claims that fighters had seized as many as 100 Shia Muslims
and were threatening to kill them unless all Shia left the
area.

Shia
leaders and government officials warned of a major sectarian
standoff, only to see the claims evaporate when Iraqi
security forces swept into the region over the weekend and
found no hostages.

But
Talabani insisted he knew where the bodies found in the
Tigris came from.

"Terrorists
committed crimes there. It is not true to say there were no
hostages," he said.

But Dr
Falah al-Permani, head of the Suwayrah health
department, said families had identified just a few of
the bodies, and it was impossible to tell where most
were from.

"The
extent of decomposition suggests all the slayings
happened more than three weeks ago, while the crisis in
al-Madain started less than one week ago," al-Permani
said.

"So
there is no way to link the two incidents."

Senior police officials at the
regional headquarters for the area gave a detailed breakdown
of when the bodies had been found.

They said they had started to
appear in the al-Suwayra stretch of the Tigris nearly two
months earlier, on 27 February. On the first three days, 27
bodies were retrieved, while during and after the supposed
hostage crisis only six corpses were pulled from the river.

MORE:

“The Most
Stupid Resistance Fighters In Recent Memory”

April 21, 2005 Kurt Nimmo,
Another Day in the Empire

Once again, qui bono enters
the equation.

Does the Iraqi resistance
benefit from killing civilians—fellow Sunnis, or so we are
told—or does the United States and its stage managed and
emerging Shia government?

Does it
make sense for the Sunni-dominated resistance to kill its
own base and grotesquely float dozens of their slaughtered
bodies down the Tigris? No, it makes absolutely no sense
whatsoever, that is unless the resistance wants to send the
following message: we are brutal mass murderers who kill our
own and for no reason beyond sheer mindless terror.

If in fact
the resistance killed these hapless Sunni civilians, they
are the most stupid resistance fighters in recent memory.

Of course, they are not stupid
and logic dictates they would not target civilians directly.

On the
other hand, as history—generally ignored and glossed
over, if mentioned at all by the corporate
media—demonstrates, the United States has consistently
employed terrorism in its “dirty wars” of
“counterinsurgency” since the end of the Second World
War.

Obviously, the United States and its stage managed
government in Iraq have more to gain from dead people
floating downstream for all to see and fear than the
resistance does.

"There's A
Lot Of Things That Are Going On Behind The Scenes That
People Don't Really Have A Lot Of Knowledge About"

22 April 2005 The Age,
Australia

Another
Australian contractor working in Iraq for security company
AKE Asia Pacific said today the tempo of violence was on the
rise again.

"It appears that it's now
picking up again ... it's quite dangerous here," the
contractor, identified only as Rodge, told ABC radio.

"You certainly wouldn't want
to be on the ground without some kind of protection," he
said.

"I would
say that things are becoming more unstable here on the
ground and every day you can just see people are a little
more scared. "There's a lot of things that are going on
behind the scenes that people don't really have a lot of
knowledge about."

Rodge said
the stretch of road between Baghdad and the airport was a
particularly dangerous place.

"I
think because it's a main artery for all foreigners
coming in and out of the country. That road is
essentially pretty much the only way you can get into
the country."

"It's one of those situations
where you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That
road out to the airport is notorious," Rodge said.

"I've narrowly missed car
bombings myself. You can get lucky sometimes. I've been on
the road and there's not an incident. Other times I've been
there and there's been an incident beforehand and an
incident after I've gone, so it's a real timing issue."

Welcome To
Liberated Iraq;

U.S. Cuts
Money For Clean Drinking Water

USA Today, April 21, 2005, Pg.
8

As summer marches into dusty
Iraq, few things become more important than a tall, cool
drink of water. But the
country's supply of clean water is being seriously
threatened because of shrinking funds from the United
States.

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION

BRING
ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

AFGHANISTAN
WAR REPORTS

Afghan War
Heats Up

Los Angeles Times, April 22,
2005

U.S. troops
fired artillery and called in airstrikes as they battled
Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan's southeast.

U.S.
Mercenary Narcs Forced To Back Off:

“With This
Government A Warlord Can Grow The Poppy But A Poor Man
Cannot."

[Thanks to
Desmond, who sent this in:]

Many
farmers said they now look back with nostalgia to the
Taliban era as a time of firm but fair rule.

"When
the Taliban opposed the poppy everyone obeyed the
Taliban," said Adbul Wali. "But with this government a
warlord can grow the poppy but a poor man cannot."

21/04/2005 By Tom Coghlan in
Maiwand, Telegraph Group Limited

Britain's efforts to stamp out
opium production in Afghanistan by destroying its poppy
fields appeared doomed to failure this week before they had
properly begun.

Faced
with violent protests from locals, US-trained Afghan
police backed by American security contractors have
suspended their mission to rid the country's lawless
south of the poppies after just one disastrous sortie.

The
60-man Central Drugs Eradication Force, with eight men
from the US security company DynCorp supporting them,
made a single abortive mission from their fortified base
near the town of Maiwand last week.

Their
attempt to plough up an opium poppy field ended when
incensed farmers and their families threw themselves in
front of government tractors and opened fire on police. In
the resulting battle six locals were injured and two killed.

Tribal
elders now claim that the provincial government has agreed
to a compromise - but it is a compromise that defeats much
of the point of the exercise.

The
authorities will eradicate only a third of each poppy field
in exchange for a pledge of non-resistance from the farmers.
In practice, this guarantees scenes such as the one played
out south of Kandahar on Sunday.

A band of portly policemen
with sticks were half-heartedly beating poppy plants,
knocking over a third of them in one field, a 10th in the
next, and then downing cans of Pepsi in the shade.

So farcical a deal between the
poppy cultivators and the police will be highly embarrassing
to Britain, the official "lead nation" in the international
crackdown on Afghan opium production.

"Most of the police, I won't
mention names, benefit from the poppy trade," said Ahmed
Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a local
leader.

Under the British-led
anti-drug initiative, farmers should be given an alternative
source of income to compensate for switching from growing
poppies. But the farmers blame corruption for undermining
the cultivation of new crops.

"The radio said there would be
seed distribution in January," said Wali Jan, a farmer from
Arghan Dab who shares his poppy fields with five others.
"We got none because those with friends in the local
government got 20 or 30 parcels each."

Another
farmer said: "Last year a powerful commander here gave
400,000 Pakistani rupees [£3,500] to the district
commissioner and brought a digital satellite dish for the
police chief. His poppies weren't destroyed."

Many
farmers said they now look back with nostalgia to the
Taliban era as a time of firm but fair rule.

"When
the Taliban opposed the poppy everyone obeyed the
Taliban," said Adbul Wali. "But with this government a
warlord can grow the poppy but a poor man cannot."

OCCUPATION
PALESTINE

Who Are The
“Terrorists”?

A.) Sharon
Demands Palestinians Stop “Terrorism”

Middle East Online 4/21/2005

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon demanded Thursday "a complete stop to
terrorism" by Palestinians before any implementation of the
international roadmap for peace. "We will not be committed
to the roadmap until the Palestinians respect their
commitment to stop terrorism," Sharon told public radio.

Friday
afternoon, Israeli soldiers attacked a peaceful procession
against the Wall and land annexations in the village of
Safa, near Ramallah. A local source in Ramallah reported
that soldiers fired rounds of live ammunition and gas bombs
at the protestors, dozens suffocated after inhaling gas
fired by the army. It is worth mentioning that Israeli and
international peace activists participated in the protest.

[To check
out what life is like under a murderous military occupation
by a foreign power, go to:
www.rafahtoday.org The foreign army is Israeli; the
occupied nation is Palestine.]

CLASS WAR
NEWS

"Que Se Vayan Todos"

Popular
Uprising Overthrows U.S. Stooge In Ecuador;

Army Won’t
Fight For Him

He
attempted to declare a state of emergency, only to
backtrack after the protesters refused to disperse and
the army did nothing to discourage them.

Mr
Gutierrez, a former army colonel from the Amazonian
forests of Ecuador's interior, came to power in November
2002 on a wave of left-wing populism, but failed to
fulfil many of his electoral promises because of
political weakness
and deference to both the United States and the
International Monetary Fund.

21 April 2005 By Andrew
Gumbel, The Independent Online & By Kintto Lucas, Inter
Press Service

Ecuador's
embattled president Lucio Gutierrez was unexpectedly thrown
out of office yesterday after a week-long popular uprising
in Quito and other cities in which he was accused of
attempting to cling to power through dictatorial means.

An
extraordinary session of Ecuador's parliament, which
convened amid the shouted slogans of tens of thousands of
protesters in the streets outside, voted 60-0 to remove him.

Almost as soon as the vote was
complete, a helicopter carrying Mr Gutierrez and his wife,
took off from the roof of the presidential palace, the
Palacio Corondolet, and headed to Quito's international
airport. Any hopes he
might have had of leaving the country were stymied by a
throng of demonstrators who poured on to the runway at
Mariscal Sucre airport and prevented his plane from taking
off.

Meanwhile, a warrant was
issued for the arrest of Mr Gutierrez and two of his
political allies - the culmination of a week of
extraordinary revolt against a leader a little over halfway
through his one and only four-year term of office.

Mr Gutierrez's fatal error was
to mishandle street protests which erupted a week ago over
what was seen as grotesque political manipulation of the
Supreme Court.

He
attempted to declare a state of emergency, only to backtrack
after the protesters refused to disperse and the army did
nothing to discourage them.

He was
immediately replaced by his vice-president, left-winger
Alfredo Palacio, who is likely to serve in an interim
capacity pending new elections.

Mr Palacio took the oath of
office to loud cheers from Ecuadorian politicians who
attended the hastily organised ceremony. "The dictatorship
has ended," he declared in his remarks on taking on the
country's leadership.

Mr
Gutierrez, a former army colonel from the Amazonian forests
of Ecuador's interior, came to power in November 2002 on a
wave of left-wing populism, but failed to fulfil many of his
electoral promises because of political weakness and
deference to both the United States and the International
Monetary Fund.

On Tuesday, the police cracked
down harshly on a march by more than 30,000 demonstrators.

The
protesters opposed any interference by the political
parties in their demonstrations and demanded the
resignation of all executive, legislative and judicial
branch officials, chanting "Lucio, Get Out!" and "Que se
vayan todos" (They Should All Go).

The
protests broke out last Wednesday in Quito, with thousands
of people taking to the streets to call for Gutiérrez's
removal.

Luis Macas,
the president of the powerful Confederation of Indigenous
Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), said his organisation
would continue to press for compliance with its demands,
even though Gutiérrez was ousted.

"We are
demanding that the country suspend the negotiation of a
free trade agreement with the United States, close the
Manta military base, and oppose the country's
involvement in Plan Colombia," the U.S.-financed
counterinsurgency and anti-drug strategy implemented in
war-torn neighbouring Colombia, said Macas.

Received:

“A Policy
Based On Injustice Is Doomed To Failure”

From: JF

To: GI Special

Sent: April 22, 2005

Subject: Same Old Same-Old:
Kenya Then; Iraq Now

Thanks for the remembrance of
the British colonial atrocities in Kenya and the blowback
they inspired among the Kenyans.

As long as
the US chooses to defend the injustices at the root of "our"
support for the Israeli dispossession and expropriation of
the Palestinians and the prosecution of that colonial war
and its new Eastern Front in Iraq we will reap the whirlwind
of blowback from the people we oppress, those labeled
"Islamo-Fascists" by the people who have seized our
government and spend our lives and treasure in the doomed
campaign to rob and oppress them.

None of us
Americans benefits in any way from the murder, dispossession
and oppression of the Palestinians and Iraqis or from the
expropriation of their lands or from the extermination of
their nations.

We just pay
for it in blood and treasure.

Keep up the good work. We
need to be educated as to "why they hate us".

GI Special distributes and
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